


Always bravely acquiesce

by Petra



Category: Doctrine of Labyrinths - Sarah Monette
Genre: Consent Issues, Dreams, M/M, Negotiations, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-26
Updated: 2011-04-26
Packaged: 2017-10-18 16:56:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/191113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Petra/pseuds/Petra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Mildmay attempts to evade the unfortunate fate of Silas Altamont, and Felix reaches some degree of certainty that he has succeeded. (Set after The Mirador, written before Corambis was published)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Always bravely acquiesce

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jamjar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jamjar/gifts).



> Spoilers for all three books. Heavy use of dialect.
> 
> For Jam, who told me some time ago that I would enjoy the books. My great thanks go to Carla, whose unflagging enthusiasm held me together; Ny, who held my hand despite not having a clue what I was talking about; and Lomedet, who gave me confidence that someone else would be enthusiastic about this great heap of words.

_Mildmay_

  
I wasn't expecting the trip to Coeurterre to go smooth, not with Felix there, and not with me tied to him tighter than I'd ever been. The obligation d'âme might've saved my life a septad times, if not more, but I liked it a sight better before it meant I knew whether Felix was awake or asleep, or if he was feeling prickly.

Or if he was thinking too hard about Gideon.

Or, powers and saints, about me.

It wasn't that I could hear what he was thinking, exactly, but I could tell when he wanted something. Call it an _esclavin_ self-protection thing, except I don't know as how it was me doing it. I could especially tell when he wanted something from me, even if it was as simple as him wishing I'd meet his skew-eyed glance for once and say whatever he thought I was thinking.

It got worse at night, and that had to be the hocus stuff I'd signed up for, because you learn early on as a kept-thief how to jerk yourself off real quiet, or you get laughed at. Or Keeper'll have your hide, if you're too loud or too unlucky. So it wasn't so much that I heard what he was doing, but I knew. Not with my ears or nothing -- that would've been too easy. You can put your fingers in your ears. Good luck putting them in your brain.

After we left the Mirador, it got so as soon as I knew he was thinking about maybe asking me for anything, I'd tell myself stories. The worst kinds I knew, from the Cordelii and their twisted-up politics to the maze of Heth-Eskaladen, and I'd focus in on those stories like if I didn't I'd have to hear my brother whispering my name.

Just exactly like, and it wasn't no more fun than that. Less fun, because I was thinking of Porphyria Levant every second I wasn't thinking of the other stories and half the time I was besides. I knew all he'd have to do was actually say my name out loud and put the faintest whisper of calling on the fucking obligation d'âme, and I'd have just as much chance to say no as a feather on the Sim.

He didn't. Kethe, sometimes I thought it'd be better if he just would, so I wouldn't have to keep waiting for him to do it, but any time I thought that I had to kick myself and tell any damn god who was listening I didn't mean it. I'd think it good and hard at Felix, too, just in case he could hear me as much as I was hearing him. Maybe if we'd been in the habit of talking about anything ever, I'd have asked. Maybe then he'd have said that any time I thought it might not be so bad, he knew it.

It couldn't be worse than Keeper, was what I usually thought about it, when I thought about it at all. And at least I'd know, flat-out, that there was no way he was gonna love me. Wasn't no way I'd ever heard of he was gonna get rid of me, either, but I didn't have anything to wait for. With Keeper -- Kolkhis, even in my head I had to think it twice, though the chances I'd ever see her again were smaller than my chances of getting away from Felix -- I'd thought maybe I could impress her. Maybe she'd think I was something special.

Felix didn't know me as well as she did, but he still knew me well enough to know that the curse I'd gotten after I killed Cerberus Cresset had gotten rid of every special thing I could do that anybody could want. Sure, I could pick a lock for him, and if he wanted to go wandering in some town in the middle of the night, we wouldn't get lost long as we stayed together, but he'd have to go at my speed. Me and Jashuki, there was no way we were going anywhere fast. If Felix had wanted to sneak back into Mélusine, he would've had to do it without me. It was indictions since I could get around quiet enough not to get myself sliced up. Add on to that how much the Mirador wouldn't be glad to see him again, and we'd both be goners.

Seemed like I didn't have nothing he wanted except my ass, but after the first time I'd thought it like that, I didn't know what he'd been thinking when he said he'd bring me along in the first place. Sure, I wanted to be with him, and even to a crazy, fucked-up  hocus, loyalty might be worth something, but it didn't sound like a good enough reason to keep me to me.

So that was the evening hours, and sometimes the middle of the night. I could hear his voice mumbling in my dreams again, never enough that I knew what he was saying exactly, but enough that I heard him say my name sometimes. During the day, it wasn't so bad, because the worst I expected him to do was snap at me.

When we had a slow day once -- mud, more mud, and enough rain to drown the Arcane -- I could feel his irritation added on to mine and bubbling over. Smart guys, feeling that kind of shit just in front of them, would turn tail and run, but I couldn't get far enough from him to be out of sight anymore, specially not on the open road. Even in the rain, I'd be going batfuck crazy before I got half a mile.

Instead of turning tail and getting as far from the pissed-off hocus as any sane guy would get, I stayed right behind him, close as he wanted me. He was snippy as hell with the innkeeper when we finally found a place to go, and I wanted to hide in the stables long as I could, but he gave me a look with his good eye and I knew I wasn't getting out of his sight. The groom cost another gorgon, but the Mirador'd paid him well, and Lord Stephen hadn't been nasty enough to take it all back. Probably there was a law about exactly how mean you could be to a heretic, apart from how he should've been burned.

Which was the other reason Felix kept me around, apart from how he had to. I hadn't figured we were keeping each other alive, hadn't figured my life rated the cost of a bowl of gruel in the eyes of the Mirador after everything I'd done, but there it was. And there we were, paying three times the going rate for a room for the night because he was Felix fucking Harrowgate, and I was Mildmay Foxe, and everybody from Mélusine to the Bastion had heard our names by then, sure as rain is rain. Wasn't like we could pass for anybody sane and normal, either, not with his eyes and our hair.

I'd thought about dying it again, more than once, but Felix had just held up his hands with their tattoos. Gloves had done the job in Kekropia, but he wasn't even trying. Plus there was the part about how nobody did the obligation d'âme anymore, so it wasn't like we could pretend we were some other hocus and his buddy, out on a pleasure trip.

At least in the big towns, there were inns with rooms with more'n one bed in the place, but in the little towns -- and it rained hardest in those, and cost more besides -- we'd end up sharing. It reminded me of having just a septad or so and huddling in with all the other kids, except that that was probably safer.

That day, Felix had been pissed off for the last five miles, and I didn't hardly look at him. The scars from the time he'd hit me were sort of gone -- not that they'd ever wrecked my face, on account of how I'd gotten someone else to do that indictions before I ever met Felix. But I remembered it, and I remembered just how much I hadn't wanted to be anywhere near him. How much I hadn't had a choice, even when I'd had most of Mélusine to lose myself in.

With just one bed and his thoughts in my head anyway, there wasn't nothing for it but to not talk. The only thing keeping us both as sane as we were -- which was not very sane on his part, and you don't want to know exactly how much on mine neither -- was that we could pretend we didn't have to talk to each other. Lucky for us, we'd gotten in some solid practice in shutting the fuck up.

It hadn't been that bad a day, and it wasn't that bad an evening. Quiet, and the food was nothing you'd write home about if you were Felix and could do shit like that. Me, I just kept my eyes on the floor and handed him the salt before he bothered asking for it out loud.

  


  
_

Felix

_   


  
The only inn in the town of Isray was nowhere I would have considered staying openly as a wizard of the Mirador. As an exile, it was lucky that they would have me at any price. The price did nothing to soothe my spirits, nor did Mildmay's dour countenance over the barely sufficient meal. I could feel his thoughts more as a stone wall, no more communicative than his face, than as anything useful.

I knew better than to ask him what he was thinking. He would only say, "Nothing," in his coarse accent, whether the subject had been lost love, lost honor, or lost pride. We had discarded so many instances of the three between us that I would have sympathized with him on any count, but he was more likely to dance a jig than tell me what was bothering him this time.

The only benefit of his silence was that it allowed mine to persist. I had little that I wanted to share with anyone, and less that I could share with him. The night before we entered Isray, I had spent some hours in consultation with Thamuris, and I feared that his health was taking a turn for the worse. Telling Mildmay such a thing would require an explanation of the Khlöidanikos, and I had no patience for that.

After an hour, though, the silence grew wearisome. "We could at least discuss the weather," I said, and Mildmay looked at me. I had expected him to at least give me the expression that he uses in lieu of a smile. Instead, he seemed to be expecting me to scream at him at any moment.

He blinked, though, and seemed to relax. "Pretty fucking awful," he said, and shrugged.

"Marathat is not known for its sunny disposition any more than you are." He shook his head and went back to looking at the fire. I let the silence hang for a minute, but it had not been sufficient conversation after the day of raindrops and mud. "Did you want to play Long Tiffany?"

Mildmay shrugged again and didn't look at me. "If you want."

He knew as well as I did that he could beat me at cards if he were half asleep and drunk besides. The offer was little more than a peace offering, not a gesture I would have had any use for in Mélusine, but matters had changed. I could have ordered him to stay where he was and gone into the common room where all of the yeomen and farmers of Isray could stare at my hands. Barring that unpalatable possibility, he was all the society I could hope to entertain, at least until we reached Coeurterre.

"It would be better than staring at the wall," I said, and he took out the cards and dealt.

We played five hands without saying anything more than what was necessary for the game, and I didn't come close to winning even one. The game took a different sort of concentration than the Sibylline, and it wasn't one I could use my practice in thaumaturgic studies to augment. "Enough," I said when Mildmay had laid down the final winning card. "All these numbers. It's as bad as attending a session of the Curia."

That got him to glance up at me. I hadn't used the name in weeks, or made any other reference to the daily routines of the Mirador that were indubitably progressing normally without me. "Yeah," Mildmay said. "Well, you don't got to do that anymore."

"Don't have to," I corrected him, and then I looked at the fire. "No."

To some extent, we had both left friends behind us, though I fear I had managed to alienate the majority of them. There were few enough people who regretted my absence the first time; the second, even those had surely seen the error of their ways.

I thought for a moment of Shannon, of his gift and his voice, but pushed the thought away before I could regret our parting any more sharply or futilely than I already had. The affection between us had died years before my most recent and unforgivable transgression.

It was not so late in the evening that Mehitabel would be off the stage, either, so it was certain that she, at least, was not thinking of either of us. It would be cruelty itself to bring her up to Mildmay, or even to reference one of her plays. I had never asked if he had the same sort of memory for the speeches as he had for the tales of Mélusine's history. To do so now would only stir emotions surely better left dormant.

"Might as well save the candle," said Mildmay, breaking both the silence and my reverie. "Unless you wanted to read."

Gideon's books comprised the majority of the seven I'd brought with us, and none of them would be the slightest bit of comfort on an evening that promised little more than melancholy. "No, thank you."

He quenched the flame and sat on the bed with his back to me, undressing in the low light of the fire. I closed my eyes to give him as much privacy as there was to be had and fought with the growing melancholia. If I allowed it to overwhelm me, it might well sweep him under as well, and we would either fight or remain silent for days on end.

There had been some challenge to fighting with Mildmay when I had other opponents and other companions. Now the challenge had become not fighting with him, and that was not a skill I had honed to any degree. It would have been simpler if I allowed myself to go mad again.

"You're giving me one fuck of a headache," Mildmay said, and somehow his voice seemed harsher than ever. It cut across my nerves and made me focus on him, but it did nothing to improve my mood.

"Go to sleep," I said, and when I pushed on the binding-by-forms to emphasize my words, I could feel why he might say I was affecting his headache. His own reticence seemed to affect me in turn.

He said, "I was going to," in the midst of a yawn, and I heard him lie down. His breathing shifted before I could frame a reply, which was just as well. For all we had traded only a few sentences that evening, I had nothing left to say to him.

I was no more kindly disposed to him after he had fallen asleep. I took off my outer garments and lay on the outermost edge of the bed, wishing for a ridiculous moment that someone could order me to rest so effectively.

I used Iosephinus's relaxation and sleep-inducing techniques instead, but the Mélusine construct in my dream was no more restful than the Isray of reality. I should have been able to make my way to the Khlöidanikos no matter what else had passed, but the stink of the Sim filled even my dreaming nose, and the Lower City seemed to rise around me, for all I wished to avoid it.

I knew, even as I approached the river, that I should be able to wrest back some control of my own dream from my subconscious. It was my thaumaturgical architecture, and while the Sim had spread past its normal banks in previous iterations, it had never had such a magnetism for me. It was the sort of fascination Malkar held, and the same feeling of power. The Sim had cast no spells on me, and Keeper, for all of his sins, had not been able to enforce his whims with magic. It occurred to me, as I walked the foggy dream-streets of a place I would not have visited at noon, that it would have been easier had Keeper been a wizard. The Witchfinders would have located him readily enough and paid him in their way.

Though my dream-Mélusine was not built for anyone's use but my own, and all of the gates were entirely one-directional, I heard a voice. Even as I recognized Mildmay's slurring diphthongs, I mocked myself for ever wondering. Who else could ever personify this section of the city as wholly as he did, without making me wish the dream-Sim over its banks to flood the entire place?

There were footsteps in the building I stood outside, and the door opened. "You could've at least dreamed of somewhere warm," Mildmay said, reproaching me far more openly than he ever would awake.

"You might have stayed on your own side of the bed," I said, and his eyes widened.

"This is a hocus dream, then?" He looked down the street. "Probably why it doesn't look like anywhere I've been, exactly. More like a bunch of them all at once."

His tone did not sound as though he meant to criticize me, but it went a fair way toward reminding me why I had sent him to sleep. "There are other sections that are somewhat firmer. The Mirador, for example."

Mildmay shivered. "I'm well out of there, and you know it. If it makes you happy to go wandering, I guess it's your dream, but powers, you couldn't pay me enough. I get to see it often enough in my own head." He raised an eyebrow at me. "Am I in my own head?"

I had dreamed of him often enough to be relatively certain that he was a manifestation of the binding-by-forms, and somehow of Mildmay himself, rather than my sleeping impression of him. "Not as such."

"Huh." He looked up and down the streets. "Does that mean I can't go into the Arcane, or what?"

"It's not technically the Arcane," I said, though I was considering his question more fully. "It's a dream of it. Though it's also something slightly more complicated than that."

He waved this off. "Don't tell me, it won't mean a thing to me."

I frowned at him. I was fairly certain that I could explain the concept to him quite simply, especially given that it was no longer theoretical, but Mildmay would insist on his own stupidity as well as his ignorance. "Would you like to find out the answer to your question?"

There was a sparkle in his eye that might have been a smile on anyone else. The disconnect between his emotion and his expression made me think of Gideon, and his loss stung me anew. Mildmay said, "It's not like there's anything worth seeing if it's not the real place."

"I'm curious now," I admitted.

He didn't laugh, but he spun away from me. The fluidity of the motion made me realize that here, he was physically whole. His leg was as agile as it must have been in his youth, though his face was scarred. "Ain't that the bitchkitty," he called back. "'cause if you order me to go there, you'll never know if I could've when you told me not to."

He was running toward the Arcane, despite his statement that he didn't care. If the streets had been any more like the true Lower City than they were, I would never have been able to keep him within sight, but I knew my construct better than he could. We reached the nearest entrance to the Arcane at the same time.

"You're missing a couple hundred alleys," he said, and he was faintly out of breath.

"When I created this construct, I would have had a very difficult time exploring the Lower City to make it realistic."

He scowled, though not at me. "If I end up dreaming here a lot, it'll drive me batfuck crazy, how wrong it is."

I was not at all sure how much I could change the set patterns of the streets. "I'll ward your dreams tomorrow," I offered, though what form of warding would protect him from me, I couldn't say.

"It's not like a nightmare or nothing. Just --" he waved his hand. "Wrong. Anyway." He took a deep breath and turned to face the Arcane. "So if I can go in here, what's that mean?"

It was a question so astute I wanted to shake him for his earlier protestations of dull-wittedness. "That waking commands don't affect your sleeping mind, despite the fact that the only thing that permits you to be here at all, as far as I know, is the binding-by-forms."

"I figured. I mean, I ain't a hocus, and I don't dream shit like this. If I end up in Mélusine in my dreams, it's in the right places." With his sense of direction, I didn't doubt that he would. Mildmay bounced on his toes in a movement I couldn't remember seeing him make, but then, I could only remember seeing him hale in a handful of confused flashes. "I guess I'll go for it."

He took a few slow steps into the dark street, then a few more. "Is there anything preventing you?" I called after him.

"Nope," he called back, and then he started running.

If we had been awake, I would have felt how quickly he was moving, especially with the recent strengthening of the binding. I couldn't feel him at all, though I could see him receding into the distance.

It was a great relief. There were many reasons why the binding-by-forms was heretical under the Cabaline doctrines, but its limitations on freedom were among the strongest. I had dreaded discovering that I could limit Mildmay's dreaming as effectively as his waking mind; I had not given him any far-reaching orders since we left Mélusine, but the thought of such thorough -- and unwitting -- domination made me shiver.

Once I had begun to think on it, I found it hard to stop myself from drawing unmerited conclusions. If Mildmay had gained access, through what means I could not say, to the Mélusine construct, he might well be able to reach the Khlöidanikos. It would be a new level of freedom for him, one he had not enjoyed since before we had met, never mind the spell that held us together. It would also be a form of safety for him, as well as, perhaps, a method by which we could be less taciturn than had become normal.

He would even have the chance to visit with Thamuris, who had been his friend among the Troians. That, in turn, would mean that I had not ripped him away from everything and everyone he had ever cared for.

My Mélusine was a quiet city, and I doubt she knew any more than I whether the thought made me laugh or cry.

"Felix?" Mildmay said, and before I had so much as heard his footsteps, he was beside me, as close and faithful as the binding-by-forms required of him.

The only reason I could conceive of that he would have returned so quickly was that I had inadvertently summoned him, which meant in turn that the experiment had proven he was no more free while asleep than awake. "I'm sorry," I said, and I knew then that I was weeping, foolishly. My nose was full of the smell of the Sim and the damned Arcane.

He hesitated, shifting from foot to foot, and then embraced me. The feeling of him in the dream was warmer and closer than he had ever felt in the waking world. "You didn't do nothing."

"I called you back," I said. "I didn't mean to."

"You did?" Mildmay patted my shoulder. "I only went a couple blocks, and I didn't feel you. Or hear you. Or nothing."

I frowned at him, and he let me go, though the embrace hadn't been what made me frown at all. "You were enjoying running."

He shrugged and I wanted to slap him, anything to make him talk. "There ain't nobody to talk to 'cept you."

"Isn't anyone," I said, and his expression closed down. "But you went, despite my having told you not to."

"Guess I did." He looked down the dark streets again. "Don't see why you'd care if I went there. No Dogs, no bloodwitches, no nobody."

"That's not the point." I could hear my relief turning into anger in my tone. "You did it when I told you not to, and it didn't hurt."

Mildmay folded his arms. "It's just a dream."

"Don't be any stupider than you must." I pointed toward the Horn Gate. "There are other constructs like this, and you can reach them from here."

That got him to look at me again, at least. "Did you make 'em, too?"

"Of course not. Do you think I spend my whole life dreaming?" Mildmay's mouth quirked. I said, "Shut up and come on," and turned on my heel before I could see him laugh at me.

"That don't work here," he said, and I could hear the relief in his voice. "I don't got to follow you anywhere in your dreams."

I had only gone four strides by then. "I want to show you somewhere better than this," I said, and though I had no binding-by-forms to force him to listen, I could still speak commandingly. "Come with me, or molder here in the stink of the river. It's all one to me."

I set off again for the Horn Gate, trusting that Mildmay's curiosity would convince him to follow me. He was not as far behind me as he would have liked to be, perhaps, when I came in sight of the gate and its vines. "There," I said, and turned to face him.

"Are you sure I can go through?" he asked. "It looks like a hocus-place."

"So is this." I looked at him, and then at the sunny Khlöidanikos. "It would be a shame if you were confined to Mélusine."

He wasn't smiling, I was sure of that, because I wouldn't have recognized it on his face, but I could feel the warmth of his amusement as strongly as if he'd grinned. I could also feel the bitterness of his expression. "Where the hell else d'you think I belong, then?"

I frowned at him. "Don't limit yourself."

He shook his head. "You're the dreamer, Felix. I'm just followin' you, same as always, 'cause I have to."

It was too much for me to listen to in silence, and I had promised myself not to hit him. Taking him by the shoulders and shaking him once was not the same. "You're asleep. You're dreaming. You don't have to do a damned thing I say."

He laughed, and laughed again, though it sounded at least as much like a cough as anything. "Then why the fuck are you shaking me?"

I let him go, though my hands were still trembling. "You're an idiot," I said.

"I know," he said, as calmly as if I'd told him we were both asleep.

"Don't act like you're my damned slave," I said. Yelled. It echoed off of one of the nearby buildings.

Mildmay only stared at me.

I wanted to slap him, to do anything that would remind him to put up some sort of fight. He had certainly fought hard enough while waking, where it would not buy him another inch of freedom. Here, he seemed far too resigned to a continuation of the same fate, for all he had protested that he was not.

I took him by the shoulders again and kissed him, as I had been longing to do for years. It was sweeter than the first time I had done it, less tainted with the taste of a spell, and it woke us both.

  


  
_

Mildmay

_   


  
I don't always remember my dreams, but I didn't get no say in whether I was gonna remember this one. Specially not 'cause I woke up with Felix's hands on my shoulders, same as they'd been in the dream, and his tongue in my mouth.

It was less weird than it sounds, and weirder too, because I'd dreamed of him kissing me sometimes, and me not minding so much, but it had never been a true dream like that one. And, for all he was pretty loud about thinking dirty thoughts, he'd been a perfect fucking gentleman about keeping his hands to himself, even in bed.

I remembered running, and him calling me stupid, and there wasn't no time to remember anything more before he let me go. I didn't so much make him, less than I might've and less than I maybe should've. But it'd been decads since anybody had kissed me, and I had to deal with his thinking at me all the damn time.

Also, and there wasn't nobody in Mélusine who didn't know it, Felix Harrowgate hadn't spent indictions in Pharaohlight for nothing. I wasn't molly, and I wasn't ever gonna be, but -- sometimes stories say a person kisses like a dream? Like that.

Only really, once I'd woken up all the way. And it wasn't like pushing him away and leaping out of bed was getting us nowhere at all.

"Mildmay," he said, and Kethe, his voice. Nobody said my name like that, even Felix. Like he'd only just heard it for the first time, and he wanted to make sure he'd gotten it perfect to impress me.

"I'm still not --" I said, and he put his hand over my mouth.

That was the first time I thought of Porphyria Levant, and then I wished I hadn't.

"I know," he said.

And then he didn't say anything at all, and I couldn't just lie there and shut up 'less he made me. "What'd you do that for?"

He laughed, and he sounded like Lord Felix of the fucking Mirador charming some flashie. I hadn't heard that sound in decads, and hadn't missed it, either. "I wanted to surprise you."

"It worked." I took a deep breath, trying to figure out where the fuck this was maybe going.

"Are you always so garrulous in your dreams?" He still sounded like he should be wearing brocade, and it made the hair on the back of my neck rise.

"No. You always grab people and kiss 'em?"

He held his breath for a moment before he said, "No," and he wasn't mocking me no more when he said it. "I'm --"

From the way he was bracing himself and his tone, I figured he was about to apologize. I couldn't lie there and listen to him tearing his heart out over basically nothing. "It's okay," I said, quick as I could get it out. "I just -- you surprised me, okay?"

He went quiet again. "I haven't offended you?"

"Nah." I hated him when he was all Mirador-superior, but when he snapped out of it and started getting apologetic, he scared the shit out of me. Reminded me too much of what he'd been like when he went crazy. "We're okay. Go back to sleep."

Felix started laughing, and it was the kind of laughing that you got to stop early or it takes you over. "What if I kiss you again?" he asked, and hooted like that was the best joke he'd heard in a Great Septad.

The thought made me shiver, and not enough in the bad way, neither. "I'll bite you," I offered.

He hiccuped and kept on laughing. "Not if I tell you not to."

That got me the terror I was expecting, good and proper. "Felix -- please don't." And that was all I had against him. My own stupid fault I was there, tied to this crazy hocus of a brother of mine, and the only thing keeping him from damn well anything was me saying please don't. Like anybody saying that had ever stopped him. He was contrary enough I might've been better off saying please do it. At least I'd have gotten the drop on him that way.

"Don't what?" Felix touched my cheek, and bum leg or no bum leg, I could've been out of that bed, and he could've been hurting. I would've paid for it but good later, 'cause there was nowhere to go that was far from Felix, but he hadn't told me to stay where I was.

I shook my head, and he moved his hand away. Small fucking mercies. "You really want to --" I could've called it a lot of things, and maybe some of them would've changed his mind.

But I didn't have to call it anything, 'cause he knew as well as me what he was saying. And Felix was crazy, mean, and a bastard besides, but he stopped. "No," he said, and the laughing was over, and so was the flirting. He took a couple deep breaths and said, "Would you like me to ward your dreams?"

I figured if he did that, I might not end up in his built-wrong Mélusine again, but I'd be stuck inside my own head. "Nah," I said, and I turned away from him. And I said, "Thanks," but it was quiet, and I don't know as how he heard me.

  


  
_

Felix

_   


  
I did not allow myself to sleep deeply until I had visited my Mélusine construct and found Mildmay nowhere within it. I had treated him poorly, which was no more news than the sun's rising. If I had had self-control -- ah, but if I had, I would hardly have been in the straits that kept me in the narrow bed beside him. The only consolation I had was that I had not treated him as harshly as I could have.

We did not speak of it come morning, nor of anything else. I promised myself that I wouldn't molest him further, but I knew even as I said it that my promises had no strength. Had I spoken it aloud, it might have bound me, but an oath made only in the silence of my own head might have no force outside of it unless I bound myself.

I made myself a further promise in order to strengthen the first: that if the chance arose, by some twist of fate, for me to gratify any of the desires that plagued me, I would leap at it. That promise, at least, was easy to swear, though I doubted that any of the towns we might visit would contain anyone foolish enough to treat a heretic Cabaline as his light-of-love. That sort of fool tended to frequent more rarefied circles than the road from Mélusine to Coeurterre. Once we reached a court, there would be courtiers, and Mildmay would delight in mocking me if I gathered any followers. I had few hopes of the possibility, but it seemed likely that I would eventually gather some form of society beyond his.

As soon as I had resolved to keep my impatience under tighter wraps, we reached a somewhat larger town, perhaps one that had the impudence to call itself a city. The inns, for there were two, were no more welcoming than their analogues in smaller places had been, but they did not increase their prices as far above the local norm as the hamlet taverns had done.

In order to avoid any sort of explanations or complications of the binding-by-forms, Mildmay and I shared a room in what the innkeeper did describe as the "city of Trien," but the larger population made him somewhat less wary. "Figure we could use a couple gorgons," he said, not meeting my eyes, when we had placed our meager baggage in our room.

It was an oblique request for permission, though he could have stretched the binding far enough to reach the common room without my explicit consent. "I am a tedious opponent," I said, and waved my hand. "Go on."

If it had been anyone but Mildmay, I would have worried about him. We both stood out in any crowd in this region, and his accent marked him perhaps as strongly as the tattoos on my hands marked me. Long experience had shown me that Mildmay could hold his own nearly anywhere one might expect of someone with his training and several places one wouldn't.

I tried to make use of the silence when he had gone to the common room, but I did not have enough to focus on that was not connected in some uncomfortable way with things I did not wish to contemplate.

After three unpleasant mental images of Gideon from various points of our acquaintance, the last of which I could not quite place, I packed my writing things away and went downstairs to seek some form of solace in the madding throng.

It was neither thronged nor madding, though Mildmay had managed to find himself sufficient opponents to earn a handful of coins already. He did not look entirely pleased with his progress, but he didn't so much as glance up at me when I entered. He didn't need to; I could feel the recognition of my presence.

He was, so far as I could tell, the only person who did not visually acknowledge me at some point in the next several minutes. The only beverage I could purchase was a passable beer, not to my taste but sufficient, at least, to give my hands something to do. If the bartender knew the significance of the marks on my hands, she gave no sign, but as with everything, the beer seemed to cost more than it ought.

The company was uncompanionable in the extreme, and my beer was half-gone despite its deplorable flavor before anyone deigned to notice me. When a rough-edged young man took the stool next to mine at the bar, I was sure that he meant to treat me as if I was no more important than the wallpaper. Though my acquaintances in the Mirador would have found it hard to credit, that suited me as well as anything; I could not imagine what sort of conversation I might make with him.

I was not at all prepared for him to lean toward me slightly and murmur, "You're awful pretty."

That such a man could approach me nearly made me start. His rough clothes and callused hands threw me into old habits, the ones drilled into me before courtly manners, before I had met Malkar. I was no courtier here, nor were my tattoos of any note to this man, who might serve equally well as a customer as some semblance of an equal partner in pleasure. I evaluated the price of the man's clothing with a quick glance, estimated how many gorgons he would be likely to pay for an evening's pleasure, and made a private bet with myself regarding whether he would be more likely to ask me to play the martyr or claim the role for himself. If I were to accept his offer, I would gain less money than Mildmay had thus far earned in his cards, but the catharsis might suffice to quiet my mind for a time.

"Thank you," I said, and gave him a slight smile. "Were you looking for some sort of company?"

The phrasing seemed to throw him. "Where're you from?"

His accent was unfamiliar to me, but I did not need to answer him immediately to maintain his interest. I merely spread my hand on my glass and tapped one finger to draw his attention. "Surely that should be obvious."

His eyes widened and he leaned away from me, not so quickly that he would draw attention to himself, but enough that I knew he had some knowledge of the Mirador. "Oh."

I was torn between reassuring him that I wasn't, in fact, a Cabaline any longer, and making use of my perceived station for as long as I could pretend. "So it is obvious, then."

I could see him swallow, and he looked from my hands to my eyes. "Yeah. I. Uh."

"It's all right," I said, though I was not at all sure that that was the case. "I've a room. If you wanted --"

His cheeks flushed, and I revised my estimate of his age downward, along with my assumptions of how worldly he could possibly be. He had propositioned me, after all. If he had not meant for me to accept that proposition, I could not fathom why he had spoken to me in the first place. "I didn't -- I mean, sure, but --"

"But?" I prompted him. His stammering made me long for the polished manners of even one such as Thaddeus de Lalage, who was damnably honest even in his worst moments. Barring that, I would have given much for the silence of a room shared with Mildmay, who had far more interesting things to say than this yokel and the sense to know when they were not apposite.

"You sure?" he asked.

This overgrown country puppy could hardly hurt me, even without the protection of the Virtu and the wards. Failing all else, Mildmay would only be a moment away.

"Yes," I said. "Follow me in two minutes." I abandoned the remainder of my drink on the bar and went back upstairs, though not into the room I had rented.

I was not at all sure, waiting in the hall like a chambermaid, that I had the energy for any sort of charm. If the boy continued to be as cowed as he had seemed by the simple fact of my wizardry, it would be easier to send him away as soon as he had followed me. There might be some form of consequences should the townspeople discover the depths of my depravity, but they worried me very little. Without my home, my friends, or the structures of my power, there was not a great deal left that I could lose.

My pride had trickled away somewhat in the five minutes before the stammering boy, half a head taller even than me and far broader, had managed to find his way to the stair and climb. "This one," I said, as lightly as if he had been just behind me all the way, and opened the appropriate door.

"You're really from the, the Mirador," he said, when I'd latched it again. The lock would hardly keep Mildmay away. Even so, it would have been imprudent to put myself on the other side of a locked door from my sworn protector.

"Yes," I said, and smiled at him deliberately. "Is that what you meant to ask, downstairs, or did you want something more?"

"Huh," the boy said, and grinned at me. He was missing three of his top teeth. "Don't get much of your sort 'round here. And you're -- well, you're awful pretty."

I closed my eyes for a moment and weighed the possible benefits of a few moments' sweaty intimacy with this imbecile against the relief of having him out of my hair. Clearly I had overestimated his capacity for being interesting. "Thank you," I said, and I didn't trouble to keep the asperity from my tone.

"You been traveling long?" he asked, as if it could possibly signify anything to him.

The uselessness of the question grated on my nerves, and though I could certainly have continued on with the theoretical seduction had it been worthwhile, I found myself inordinately tired of the boy's presence. "Too long, I fear." I opened the door for him. "I'm sorry, I've changed my mind."

His cheeks grew red. "What, already? I ain't even kissed you."

I looked from him to the hallway. "Indeed not. I wish you better luck in your future romantic endeavors."

He frowned, and there was something in his aspect that warned me that he would not take his dismissal lightly. I listened for my internal sense of Mildmay -- and found him three uneven steps down the hallway.

The foolish boy was still fuming at me like a disappointed toddler. "I didn't do nothin' wrong."

"Fuck me sideways 'til I cry, Felix, are you runnin' around on me again?" Mildmay said from the door.

I knew it was him, if only because no one else in the hamlet-cum-city would have used my given name. There was a snarl in his voice that threw me into more of a state than he would ever have credited. He sounded so unlike himself, so angry and possessive, that I knew afresh why I had mistaken him for Keeper in my madness.

The boy who had hoped to seduce me laughed, a braying sound that seemed miles distant from where I stood. "This's your loverboy? They say they're crazy up in Mélusine, but damn, that's plum nuts."

Mildmay had him pinned against the wall with a dagger at his throat before I could say the slightest word. "You get downstairs, and you don't say boo to anybody 'bout this, ever, or I'll make you eat your damn fool ears. Got me?"

"Yes sir," the boy said, his voice squeaking like a child half his age. "Sorry, sorry, sorry. Let me go, I didn't do nothing."

Mildmay glanced at me. I nodded, and he hid his knife in his sleeve with a movement I could hardly track.

The local boy looked from him to me and back, then fled downstairs as if Mildmay the Fox had chosen to pursue him.

Mildmay looked at me and shook his head. "Least I know why you took me on," he said.

The sound of his voice, coarse as ever but softer in tone, broke the surface of my fear of him. I could manage to say, "Yes?" without my own voice wavering.

"Somebody's gotta keep you out of the worst trouble, and you've got no damn eye for it." He latched the door and looked to me again. "Got the key with you?"

"Yes." I locked the door, and though I willed my hand to stillness, the key rattled in the lock. A normal man would have heard nothing.

Mildmay's concern was heavy in his voice. "He didn't do nothing to do you, did he?"

I made myself laugh. "He hadn't the time."

"Good." He sat heavily on the bed. "I'd hate to have to kill him."

To have him state it so openly made me shiver again. "I wouldn't order you -- or even ask --"

He did not smile, but he laughed. "Wouldn't have to."

I couldn't bear to look at him, even though the room was lit only by firelight. "Why don't you go downstairs again?"

I could feel his surprise -- hear it, in the way he shifted, and feel it most strongly. "What for? Your boytoy there's gonna think we're --" he let the sentence die.

Matters would be far different if we were, I did not say, and I did not have any other response for several breaths. "I'm not fit company."

"Don't start that," Mildmay said, and he sounded tired. "You're plenty good company for me, and better'n that kid deserves."

I shook my head, realized he couldn't necessarily see the gesture, and sat down beside him. "Better than you deserve," I said.

Perhaps it was the darkness that let me speak so; perhaps it was the pervasive melancholy -- I would not let myself call it mikkary -- that had plagued me for the length of the trip from safety to who knew what.

Whatever it was, I expected Mildmay to brush it off. But he said, "I reckon I picked sides a while back," and he kissed me.

It was so light and fleeting a touch that I would have thought I'd imagined it had I not had the confirmation of his nervous shiver and the warmth of his thigh against mine. He was normally at least as skittish as I regarding any form of physical contact.

As for affection, I would have thought he knew better than to tease, if that was what he was doing. He knew perfectly well that I desired him, and that I had never been one to restrain myself when temptation not only knocked at the door, but put its hand tentatively on my shoulder. And said my name.

  


  
_

Mildmay

_   


  
Felix was wound so tight I was afraid he'd break and take me with him, and that was before I got up all the nerve I'd ever had and kissed him.

The thing was, I knew someday he might lose it again, and on that day I didn't want to be the guy next to him. 'cause Felix -- Felix was mean on his bad days, and sharp, and all kinds of nasty, but if he lost it in the wrong kind of way -- I knew damn well what Strych had been like, and I could figure out the not-hocus parts of what he'd probably put Felix through. And Strych had learned from Porphyria Levant, who wasn't my favorite bedtime story.

Then along came me, and signed myself up to be the guy next to Felix come hell or high water, sunny days or batfuck crazy nights.

And Felix was losing it, though maybe he didn't let himself know that so much. Losing it enough to not even notice the kind of guy he'd go off with, though I was never into the kind of shit he used to do and I could spot trouble across the room.

Which -- for a sane guy was maybe a problem, or a guy who had something he could rely on. But me and Felix, we were walking knife-edges, him in his head and me right behind him, and I figured maybe I had two hours before he snapped and took whatever the fuck he wanted from me, and maybe I had two decads, but it sure wasn't gonna be longer than that. Kethe, there were a pile of ways that things could get worse, but I didn't figure him making me fuck him or the other way around would make even him happier.

And, well, I been in enough court sessions at the Mirador to know it's fucking dangerous to set a precedent, and that was one precedent I didn't wanna see anywhere near me.

So there's me, kissing my fucked-up molly brother because otherwise he'll make me, and at least if it's me jumping before he says frog, it's me and not him.

I didn't think he was gonna give me no time to breathe once I went for it, and when he didn't so much as try to kiss me back, I said, "Felix?"

If I'd waited too long, and he was just losing it where I couldn't do nothing or even say sorry -- well, then there'd be fuck-all I could do. But I could at least ask.

He took a deep breath, and I wanted to laugh, but I didn't. Kethe, if he'd thought I was laughing at him he'd've lost it for real. "You can't possibly mean this."

Smart bastards like Felix might've had a good long discussion about what 'mean' meant, but I didn't have the words for it, or the time. The longer he just sat there, the more I thought he was probably right. It was a fight between how much I was scared of Felix-right-then and how much more I was scared of Felix-later. "Sorry," I said, "but you're wrong." And I took another breath, and kissed him again.

He made a strangled noise in his throat and shoved me away. "When did I say it?" he asked, and his voice was shaking so bad I wasn't so much shocked as scared for him when he said, "I didn't mean to make you, I didn't, damn it, I'm sorry."

"You didn't say nothing," I said, and I couldn't make myself touch him again right yet. He was getting too worked up, maybe, or maybe I was just getting to be a coward in my old age.

"Then what the fuck is wrong with you?" He was standing up, and his accent was all shot to shit, and he sounded like a scared kid from the Lower City.

Like my damned brother, and that didn't stop me at all. "Powers, Felix, it's okay. I --"

"Don't lie to me," he said, cold as anything, and it had all the weight of the obligation d'âme on it.

I wanted to say, "I want you to," but it wasn't true enough to get it out. "It's safer this way." I started unbuttoning my shirt, trying to keep my hands moving and praying to whatever last-picked god looked after idiots dumb enough to sign up for this kind of stupid deal.

"Safer than what?" he asked, and his flashie voice was coming back. So was one of them edges of laughing 'til he screamed.

I started with the things that didn't feel like lies, figuring I could maybe soften the other ones in my head 'til I could believe 'em enough to spit them out. "Stupid kids like the one you dragged up here by his prick. Or guys you don't know who they are, or dumb flashies in Coeurterre, or --" I shrugged. "Just about fucking anybody. Is less safe. Than me."

He smiled one of them smiles that has to hurt to have on his face. If I'd been the one telling him not to lie, he wouldn't've been able to look like that. "That doesn't begin to tell me why you're doing this."

I knew that, but I'd figured he'd be distracted enough by getting what he kept thinking about that he wouldn't think about it too hard. Don't look a gift former-assassin in the mouth, right, Milly-Fox? But Felix was smarter'n me from day one, even when he was so far round the bend his head must've been like one of his fucking labyrinths.

The only solid answer I had was the one he'd already heard, and I knew he wouldn't like listening to it twice. "Safer for me too," I said, and I made sure to mumble but good. Mehitabel would've had a hell of a time figuring out what I was saying.

Felix wasn't her, and he didn't have to even squint to figure out what I'd said. He went pale, but he didn't drop the smile. "Really. Tell me how." And the words were so calm they were like a yawn, but fuck, he laid into the obligation d'âme like it was the only thing keeping him on his feet.

"Strych," I said, and he didn't fall over. Kethe, I half wanted him to, just so's I'd know he felt as bad as I did. "And Porphyria Levant. I --" I shook my head, because he couldn't make me think any faster than normal, and I couldn't make the words go right. "Fuck, you can make me do anything, and someday you might. And I don't --" I bit my tongue to stop the truth I couldn't stand to say to him. "I don't want to have to because you said."

He stared at me like I told him he'd started turning into Strych for real. "I wouldn't," he said, and I had to look away and get rid of every last bit of expression I could chase off. I didn't believe him, but as soon as he worked that out, he'd get madder than he'd been with me since fuck knows when.

I would've been better off with a drooling moron for a brother, 'cause it took him one quick breath to know exactly what I was thinking and to hit the damn roof over it. "I'm not him," he said, and he sounded just as calm as the time between lightning and thunder. "I'd never --" he was clenching his hands into fists so hard it had to be digging his damn fool rings into his skin.

I wanted to nod, or something, anything to stop him from getting madder than he already was, but when I tried to do it I knew I was lying, and I couldn't fucking move. It was like he'd already told me to lie there and take it from him. "Okay," I said, and it was far enough from a flat-out lie that I could say it if I was staring at the floor instead of at him.

"You don't want to," Felix said, and there was a waver in his voice, like even with everything I was doing to lay myself open for him he was gonna lose it again. "Answer me."

He wasn't asking anything he hadn't already asked, and the truth didn't get any prettier the more he dragged out of me. "Better now than later."

"Because you don't trust me," he said, and there went the laughter, right over the edge in one spine-crawly giggle. "Because you shouldn't," and he wasn't gonna stop laughing 'til something gave, I could tell that right off.

I could probably get him to hit me and snap himself out of it before he started crying, or I could stand up and grab him by the shoulders again and make him shut up for the length of time it took to kiss him. "I don't trust you far as I could throw you, you crazy bastard," I said, and he wasn't laughing then, just shivering like that last kiss had been a bucket of cold water.

He wasn't pissed off, either, and he wasn't thinking straight, because powers, he didn't have to stand there and take nothing from me. "Me neither," he said, and his voice was all soft. Not dangerous-soft, but kid-soft. "Why now?"

It was safe enough to shrug, and it wasn't lying, neither. "Hell if I know what you're gonna do next. Least this gets it out of the way." And once I'd made up my mind, there wasn't no point in waiting around and hoping I'd find a way out of it. There wasn't no way out.

Felix went still, like he was trying to hide from somebody dumber and farther away than me. "I doubt that one instance will suffice," he said, and the words were mocking at me, but it was better to have him get all big words again than figure out how I'd hurt him this time.

Not like he was saying anything I didn't know, anyhow. "Right." I kissed his cheek, and he didn't move. "Guess I better hope it gets easier with practice."

"Damn you." Felix let out his breath, all at once, like the rest of his conscience was dying a little death. "You won't let me say no to this, will you?"

The hell of it was, he was sort of right about that, and it almost gave me his stupid laughing fit. "Would be pretty rude," I said instead, and shrugged, glancing toward the door. "But if you want me to go get that kid back up here --"

He was fucking fast when he wanted to be, and I wasn't watching him close enough. He got one hand on my shoulder and one on my cheek, and then he kissed me, fierce and mean and wild, like he still didn't trust me not to run away. Or like I was making him, or paying him.

And I wasn't molly, but fuck me sideways, what was I gonna do, bite his tongue off and tell him no when I'd been flat-out begging him to go for it? I could've just stood there like a virgin with two septads and let him, but I figured there was no point in doing this shit halfway.

When I kissed him back, he made this choked sound, high in his throat, like I'd managed to really and truly surprise him this time. I could've pretended he was some girl, maybe, if there'd ever been a girl that much taller'n me who smelled like a hocus and wanted to kiss me like I was the best thing she'd ever met. If I didn't let myself think too hard --

No, no, and fuck no. The things I thought when I wasn't thinking of Felix were enough to curl your hair, and he didn't need no more curl. So I kept my brain on him, though it cost me some to do it. This is Felix, Milly-Fox, and boy, are you fucked.

Kissed, first, just exactly like he hadn't had nobody to kiss for decads and needed to prove he could still melt somebody's spine with just his tongue. Didn't take no magic, even on me. He had me shaking, and then he leaned on me and even if I'd been thinking of a girl -- not fucking Porphyria Levant -- I would've lost it then. Takes a special kind of girl to have a prick that hard, and if she had one, she'd have the manners to keep it away from a guy's belly.

I was pretty far past letting myself mind. It wasn't nothing I didn't know starting out, and I'd figured from the start I'd end up on my belly for him before we were done. It wasn't nothing I'd ever wanted -- sacred bleeding fuck, if I'd wanted it, Felix'd've gotten tired of me indictions ago.

Which was one hell of a thing to think while he was kicking off his boots and getting my trousers around my ankles as fast as a --

I laughed against his mouth, because what the hell else are you going to do when what you think is exactly what you're doing, and the joke would just piss him off? I could've swallowed it down, but fuck me sideways, there's only so much you can take in a day, and I was saving up for the big stuff. That was what tripped me up. If I'd just had the sense to treat it all like a job -- in, work, out, Milly-Fox, and don't lose your focus -- I wouldn't have laughed.

It made him stop kissing me, and by that point we were both pretty out of breath. I leaned up toward him, trying to get him to start again. Powers, it'd be easier than explaining, but he said, "What?" and I could tell, even in the middle of everything, that he wasn't gonna let me get away with nothing.

"Didn't think it'd be this much fun," I said, though fun wasn't half what it was.

He said, "Ah," in my ear, and kissed my neck, and we were off again, though it almost got me thinking of someone else when he did that, and there just wasn't room in the for anybody but the two of us right then. All I could manage was to keep on telling myself it was gonna work, that he wasn't gonna snap and make me do nothing at all.

Whether it helped or not that he was gentle, too -- well, none of the people I didn't want him to be would've been like that, so at least it wasn't like them. Wasn't nothing like Felix, come to that, but at least he was quick. Had my clothes in a puddle quick as you like, and his weren't so far behind, though by then my hands had started shaking.

Keeper -- Kolkhis -- was laughing at me in my head, and she didn't go away when I set up to ignore her, neither. Come a long way, Milly-Fox, from picking the best locks ever made to spending thirty seconds on three buttons.

They were the three damn buttons keeping me from being face-to-prick with Felix being right there and ready as hell for more, so Keeper could keep her fucking cruel mouth shut about it.

I didn't know which way to jump first, but Felix gave me this baby brother to a push and I ended up flat on my back on the bed, as much 'cause he wanted me there as 'cause my balance was gone. Felix got on his knees on the bed, and -- Kethe, I wasn't expecting him to do any damn thing for me. Kissing had gotten me most of the way to crazy, but he licked the head of my cock, and I couldn't --

I sat up and pushed him away, and my bad leg started yelling that if I was going to do dumb shit like that, it wasn't going to be quiet and let me. At least it and me were in the same kind of mood. "Felix, don't."

He put his hand on my hip and frowned. "I'm perfectly aware that you're doing this against what I must call, for want of a better term, your best judgment, but --" he cut himself off, took a breath, and finished, "-- it's not any worse if you let yourself enjoy it, is it?"

I could feel the command he hadn't given me, hanging over us both like the sanguette. Lie back, Mildmay. Let me do this. Enjoy it, as much as you can. But he hadn't said it, and he'd done his best not to really mean it that much. I shrugged. "This does fuck-all for you, though."

He gave me a smile I hadn't seen since he got the better of some stupid bastard at court, back -- not home. In the Mirador. "It's more effective than you might think." Maybe it was a real smile, and maybe he was acting, but he wanted me to calm down, so I took a deep breath and made myself lie back down. For then.

"If you say so."

"Oh, I do," and I could hear him grinning, though fuck knows he could probably fake that kind of grin as well as I could keep a straight face.

I couldn't make myself look at him, but I could feel his rings, and then his tongue again, and I didn't know what he wanted of me, but I'd have done anything to make him keep going, and anything else to make him stop, all at the same time. He was quick enough with his tongue when all he was doing was talking, but powers and saints, I couldn't catch my breath, and if I hadn't spent indictions doing just what Keeper said in bed, I would've been gone before I had the strength to choke back a moan, it was that good.

Wasn't very often I was glad I'd spent all that time in bed with her, but fuck, I couldn't take an hour to argue Felix into fucking me blind and then give out on him ten seconds in.

It was a good four minutes by anybody's count before he reached between my legs and got his fingertip right there, right in me, and I couldn't stand thinking about it and trying not to give in all and knowing all that wet, hot feeling was Felix, who -- Kethe, he could've ordered me to run to the moon for him and I'd've done it, bad leg or no.

Coming like a kid who's just gotten to see his girl's breasts for the first time was easier than that. Doing it without saying nothing -- and I wasn't going to say nothing, ever, 'til he asked me to -- was a septad times harder, but I did it just the same.

  


  
_

Felix

_   


  
Mildmay had his breathing under control faster than I would have believed possible, but some of the tension had gone out of him. On that score, at least, I could count a minor victory. I wasn't sure what he would tolerate next, though it was quite clear what he considered necessary. I lay beside him and pulled the bedclothes up around us both, but it seemed overly daring, in a paradoxical way, to take him in my arms.

He waited for some idiosyncratic length of time before he acknowledged that I was there. Had it been anyone else, I would have felt unappreciated, but his gruff "Thanks," was more than I had entirely expected. I was more than braced for the, "You gonna do it, then?" and the corresponding leaching of emotion from his features.

I raised my eyebrow at him. "Not alone."

He frowned and wrinkled his nose. "Fuck no. I -- what should I do first?"

I had constructed several different complex fantasies regarding just how I might answer that question in this context, should Mildmay ever feel moved to ask it, but none of them suited the reality of the situation. As far as I could tell, he knew what the process entailed, but had no practical experience.

The remnants of romantic desires suggested that I should keep him on his back, the better to touch him, but it seemed impracticable considering his disability. "Just as you'd think," I said, and used my archest tone to make it something of a joke, "turn over and spread your legs."

He moved with an alacrity I hadn't entirely expected, and I had to think carefully to be sure I hadn't made it an order in any sense. "Do make yourself comfortable," I added.

Mildmay turned his head and frowned at me. "Fuck, I'm trying."

His expression was nothing I wanted from him. I had taken more than enough lovers whose only compensation for their pain was my money, and I allowed myself to believe that at some point, Mildmay might well agree to play the martyr for me, but this was not an appropriate time for it. "Then I ask only one thing of you," I said. If I had trusted him to follow through with it, I would not have leant upon the binding-by-forms, but -- "Tell me if I hurt you."

From his grimace, he felt the command, resented it, and knew why I had made it with such reinforcement. "Yeah." He folded his arms and rested his head against them.

I ran my hand down his back -- he was no more unscarred than I, and far more graceful -- and got out of bed. My things were neatly packed in a bag at the end of the bed, and it only took me a moment to find what I was seeking. I had packed it at much from force of habit as anything -- that, and thoughts of Gideon, who had liked the scent. I spread a liberal amount on my fingers to warm it and rejoined Mildmay, setting the rest of the salve by the pillow.

He was tense again, though he merely raised his eyebrows at me. "I wasn't joking," I said. "I don't intend to do anything that causes you discomfort."

His mouth twisted. "No?"

It was a sweeping statement, and, I knew, one in great disjunct to the lines of our previous relationship with each other. "In this context," I amended. "Though --" If we were to be each other's major source of company for the foreseeable future, and if I did not misstep greatly and cause him to flee my bed, we would be all the more bound together, living in each other's hose rather than each other's pockets. "I'll -- make an effort. In other contexts."

He flushed and turned his face away from me to hide it, as if I didn't know that I had hurt him, year after year, and that his loyalty was more than I deserved. I had lost count of the times that he would have left me, had he been able to do so.

Those times were gone, and the only true restitution I could make to him was to promise not to add to their number.

"Also," I said, letting my clean fingers trace the line of his hip, then his buttock, "this will be easier if you let yourself relax. But I won't say that it will hurt less, given that --"

He hunched his shoulders and shook his head, the tight braid of his hair twitching with the movement. "I ain't that stupid. I'll tell you."

"Good." I let my fingers slip into his cleft, and he went as limp as a ragdoll. It was an enviable level of control over his own muscular reactions, but it seemed both extreme and difficult to maintain. He kept his breathing soft and even as I worked a finger into him, and managed not to respond in any way that made me think he was aware of the contact, though I knew he could in truth be aware of little else at the time. "Mildmay --"

"Yeah?"

It felt strange to have to ask for intimacy from him when he had already offered me so much, but I could not demand it, nor did I entirely deserve it. "Would you look at me?"

He shifted enough to meet my eyes, though I could see that it cost him some pride to do it. "Better?"

I wanted to smile at him, but I did not, in truth, feel particularly happy. My blood was pounding in my ears from desire and he seemed as absent as if I had given him phoenix.

The thought made me quail, but if he had taken any such thing, his eyes would have changed. "I can hardly see," I said, and I reflected for a moment how odd any number of men would have found it that I asked my lover permission to light a lamp. "Do you mind a candle?" I could have summoned witchlights, but I didn't want to spare the concentration.

Mildmay's eyes widened -- I could see that much -- and he laughed once, harshly. "I ain't pretty enough to be worth the wax."

"You've seen my back," I said shortly. The scars there were nothing I cared to parade for anyone.

"Yeah, but --" he shrugged. "I guess you know how I look, too. If you want."

"Close your eyes, then." With my clean hand, I located the lucifers, then lit a candle. After I had blinked away the brightness, I took advantage of the moments before he adjusted as well to truly look at him. He was hiding his face, and he seemed determined to hide everything else. His shoulders were loose again with the sort of languor that only comes from willpower or drugs, not from any sort of actual relaxation.

When he turned back to look at me, his pupils looked normal. I might have extinguished the light then, but with his earnings from cards, we could afford the luxury, and I was afraid of how he would define hurting him if I could not see him. "You didn't run," he said, and he used the expression that he would if he were smiling.

"Nor did you." I kissed him lightly, mindful of the distaste some men felt at the flavor of semen.

He shrugged and raised his eyebrows again. "You can keep going."

I had not expected to catch him out in any extremes of emotion by simply being able to see his expression, but I did hear his breath hitch quite clearly when I pulled my fingers away to add more salve. "Tell me if that hurt," I said.

His expression went as blank as untouched paper, save for the scar down the side of his face, then crumpled into a frown. "Powers, Felix, if you don't trust me when you've already fucking ordered me, what the hell do you want?"

"I suppose this is your honest reaction." I kept as much of my irritation out of my tone as I could and hoped that it sufficed as an apology. "You've just been -- passive, and then you weren't."

Mildmay buried his face in the pillow and mumbled something.

"What?" I asked, and I was ready to insist that he tell me when he surfaced.

"It felt good, is all."

I was hard-pressed not to laugh at him in my relief. "Well -- good." I slicked my fingers further and touched him again. "I'd hoped it would," I said, choosing my words with caution to keep them as far from imperative as I could.

"Why?" he asked, and he let out a brief sigh when I twisted my fingers slightly.

If I hadn't been holding my breath to listen, I would have missed it. "What do you mean, why?" I frowned at him and held my hand still so as not to go too quickly in my aggravation. "If we're going to do this again, I'd rather you had pleasant memories of it."

He had the gall to shrug, and if I hadn't had two fingers deep inside him and his eyes meeting my own, I might have slapped him for it. "Don't much matter, does it."

I met his faux glacial calm with my own; his reserve was insulting, but I could not meet it with my own rage. "I'm sorry, I misunderstood you. I thought you offered to become my lover, not my catamite."

His brows drew together for a moment over that. "There's not a whole fucking lot of a difference."

"You know better than that." I could not keep the scorn from my voice. "And if you were truly offering to be my whore --" I drew my fingers out of him and savored the sigh he made, even though I was angry with him. "I'm certain I can find one both more skillful and more responsive than you for a fraction of the price."

Mildmay sat up onto his knees. "No, I -- sacred bleeding fuck, weren't you listening?"

I had been listening most carefully, but whatever he thought he had said was beyond me. "To what, pray?"

He looked at the candle rather than at me. "You ain't gonna make me like it. And I don't care if I like it, 'cause it's not for me anyhow, so just do it already."

"Every so often, I suspect you aren't as foolish as you'd like me to think," I said, and he didn't even take a deep breath. "Then you do something -- not like this, per se, but along these lines -- and I doubt that you have enough brain to know where the sun rises without watching it happen."

Mildmay said nothing at all. I rephrased my next sentence slightly before I said, "If you don't enjoy this, it's no better than if I had forced you to do it in the first place."

"Powers, Felix, it ain't about me." He sounded as vexed as I felt, which was at least fair.

"Then who is it about?" I could not help but laugh at his insistence. "Even whores receive a form of compensation."

Mildmay shook his head. "You don't owe me nothing."

"If I ask nothing of you, then no, I don't, beyond what we already owe to each other. If you're determined to be my lover -- and you certainly seem to be -- then I owe you the consideration and reciprocation standard under those circumstances."

He had made his face blank, as he so often did when there was no simple response. "You already own me."

The precise terms of the binding-by-forms implied so, but I was -- not Malkar. And I would never be him. "Not all of you. Not like that, as you so astutely observed to me. I desire you, but not to that extent."

His cheeks flushed with some emotion that he could not entirely disown. "If you ain't gonna be happy unless I come every time you fuck me, you got a lot of unhappy coming."

"That would be a great deal to ask of myself, let alone you." I shook my head. "Particularly given your native distaste for the undertaking. It's sufficient that you don't find it overwhelmingly disgusting, at the moment, but --" I frowned at him. "If you find it at all pleasurable, tell me, so that I can find ways to emphasize those aspects."

"Fuck, you're crazy," he said, but it wasn't the wary tone he would use if he'd thought it was true. "One second you tell me I'm dumber than the wall and then next you use all those septagorgon words and expect me to know what you're saying."

I raised my eyebrows at him. "And do you?"

"Yeah."

I took a deep breath, biting back the urge to turn my irritated demands for information into a command. "Will you tell me what pleases you, then?"

He stared at the pillow. "Fuck, I hardly know half the time."

Whatever his lovers had done to him -- and I did not hold Mehitabel responsible for this reticence -- it would clearly take more patience than I had ever possessed to heal, and more than I had at the time to entirely overcome. Beginning the process of studying the problem would have to be sufficient. "When you do know, at least?" I pressed him.

"When I know what to say."

"That will do for now." I smiled at him, more the smile I'd have used in the classroom for a witty pupil than one I used in bed, but it seemed more to the point. "Shall we go on, then?"

Mildmay lay down on his stomach again. "Whenever you want."

It would have been entirely counterproductive to attack him, but that was still my first instinct. I forced it back and ran my clean hand over his shoulders. "When you're ready," I answered him, keeping my tone light.

"I been ready enough," he said, and in some ways, I sympathized with this lie. He wanted it over badly enough not to mind that it would be far more uncomfortable if I rushed him.

I added more salve to my fingers and began again, not quite as slowly as I had the first time, but nearly so. "I promised not to hurt you in this, and --" I smiled, though he couldn't see it. "I know you're lying."

He shrugged and resettled his cheek on his folded arms. "You wanna drive yourself crazier waiting, fine." He spread his legs further.

It was a provocative gesture, and had I been any less inclined to ignore his overt statements, he would have received just what he wanted. As it was, I took a long breath before I was certain that I had the control not to take advantage of him. Fortunately for both of us, I had dealt with far worse and more devious provocations from Malkar and trained myself not to react significantly.

It was only, therefore, a small, manageable slice of eternity before Mildmay gasped and bit his lower lip. "Too much?" I asked, though he did not seem to be panicking, despite having three of my fingers spreading him open.

He shook his head slightly. "It's just -- guess it feels good."

I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding. "Ah. Then we're making some form of progress."

Mildmay shrugged. "If it counts."

"It counts that you were willing to tell me, if nothing else."

He raised his eyebrows at me. "You're the boss."

I hadn't wanted to be reminded of that, but it was inescapable. "Push back against my hand -- if you can," I amended, looking at his bad leg.

"Powers, Felix, why'nt you ask me to --" he shook his head and lifted his hips slightly. "Fuck, what're you waiting for?"

"If you can't walk tomorrow, you're no good to me," I said, exaggerating slightly, perhaps. He shivered.

"Want me to suck you off? I never done it, but --"

The thought had occurred to me, but I preferred the challenge of convincing him to accept this form of pleasure to the thought of convincing myself to endure any more patiently. "Another time," I said, and the only way I could form the words and push aside the mental image was to make my voice teasingly light.

Mildmay said, "Huh," and wasn't quite smiling. "Okay, then." He lifted his hips again. "Never would've figured you were this patient."

I tightened my free hand into a fist, but the tension did nothing to ease anything else, let alone distract me. "I'm not."

"You got another word for it?" He shook his head. "It -- powers, it don't hurt, just --" The way he turned his hips made my breath stop again.

It was a long moment before I could make myself move enough to speak. "If you don't stop, I --"

Mildmay laughed, softly and breathlessly, and did it again. "You'll what?"

There was nothing for it. There might have been on some other occasion, but my self-control -- while greater than many people might surmise -- had reached its end. I moved onto my knees, regretting that it meant giving up even the dubious clues that seeing his expression might give me. In a sense, he had won at last by pushing me into a state where I cared less immediately for his comfort than my pleasure.

In a more tangible sense, I had won, and I knew it even as I slicked myself. "I'll stop waiting for you to be honestly comfortable."

"'bout fucking time."

His breath hissed between his teeth when I pushed into him at first -- and, in a thousand ways, at last. "Are you --"

"It's okay," he answered, and I hadn't the strength to doubt him.

It was not wholly impossible to take this phase as slowly as the preceding one, but it was excruciatingly difficult. "Just okay?" I asked, and let my tone mock us both.

The Mildmay of my fantasies never snorted with derision in the middle of sex. "Don't hurt."

He was still flat on his stomach. The habits I had learned with Gideon chided me for that, but refinements would have to wait. I could hardly hear Mildmay's answer over the surging pulse of desire. "Someday," I said, muffling my words as best I could in the back of his neck, "I'll convince you to honestly enjoy this." It was a vow that should not be impossible to keep, and one that would cost me less than others I had made.

His voice shook slightly when he said, "Okay," but not enough to concern me.

It would have been difficult for anything to concern me short of Stephen Teverius bursting into the room pursued by Malkar, and even had they come in, I would have been inclined to commit some gross act of heresy rather than stop. "One thing more," I said, in the brief moments that I could summon speech from the tumult of pleasure overwhelming me.

"Yeah?"

"I'm generally -- less desperate than this." I'd squandered all of my patience in gentling Mildmay -- as he had wasted his in seducing me -- and there was simply no way I could summon more.

I promised myself that some other time, when it did not take so very long to convince all parties to relax, I would savor this, but at that point it was a futile promise, as I came to the end of my self-control and spent, shaking with the urgency of it and hardly trusting myself not to call out.

"Huh," Mildmay said, while I was still coming back to myself. "That ain't as bad as I figured."

From anyone else, it would have been a near-mortal insult. Under the circumstances, it had the ring of high praise.

  


  
_

Mildmay

_   


  
Just when you think your day can't get no weirder, your crazy hocus brother who's all covered in sweat and slipping -- ain't that a word for it -- out of your ass starts laughing like you've told the best fucking joke he's ever heard.

It ain't a situation I'd exactly recommend, and I was half-sure I hadn't pissed him off, but it didn't hurt to check. "Sorry," I said, and he just giggled at me like he was losing it again.

"It'll be better next time," Felix said, and he lay down next to me and put his arm around me -- never mind how bad he needed a bath, or how much he hated being touched. Then something else funny as hell occurred to him, and he started snickering again. "Possibly we'll both manage to last more than ten seconds."

He wanted me to last a while, all he had to do was start with the nasty part, but it wasn't as nasty as you'd maybe think, and -- okay, I could kinda see how it would be fun from both ends once you got used to it. He was still laughing, but I didn't figure pissing him off to get him to stop would be a good plan. Easier to play along a while. "Tell me again how that'd be better?"

"Less --" Felix waved a hand like his flashie words were all flying away. "Less ridiculous." The curls around his face were all frizzing out like he was some Troian barbarian.

I didn't so much want to kiss him, but I figured it would maybe calm him down, or at least change the subject, so I did it. Wasn't so bad as it was before. Getting better, even, with a little practice.

He leaned into me like -- like he'd really meant it when he said he figured we were lovers.

Like he wanted to fall asleep touching me, which I hadn't figured he'd want. "You okay?" I asked him.

"I'm supposed to ask you that," he said, and the giggles were gone again, but he wasn't pissed off. He seemed just about calm enough to get some sleep, and powers, after the time we'd had, I could use it.

"I'm fine," I said, and shrugged. I wasn't gonna sit down for a while without knowing what we'd been up to, but I wasn't gonna take a breath or look at him for a while without knowing it, too, so it didn't matter a damn. "You?"

He gave me this look he didn't use hardly ever. Reminded me of when he was off his head, without the crazy parts. Like he didn't know how he'd get through anything if I wasn't there.

I kinda held my breath, which is a fucking stupid habit, Milly-Fox, and past time to break it. But Felix kissed me, and it was all the answer I was gonna get. Good thing it was all the answer I needed.


End file.
